“Dear Dr Charlotte,
I’m writing because I’m confused by something that keeps happening when my partner and I go on holiday. At home, we get along well; we communicate, we laugh, we’re generally steady. But the moment we go away together, it’s as if some invisible switch flips. We start bickering over tiny things: where to eat, how fast we should walk, whether we’re “wasting the day.” Sometimes it escalates into full arguments that leave us both feeling bruised and bewildered.
It’s strange because holidays are supposed to be relaxing, yet I often feel more tense than I do in my normal life. I find myself getting irritated by things that wouldn’t normally bother me, and I can see the same happening for him. We both end up feeling misunderstood, like we’re somehow on different wavelengths the moment we step off the plane.
The last trip was especially hard. We argued on the second day about whether to stick to a plan or be spontaneous, and the tension lingered for the rest of the week. We still had good moments, but underneath it all was this feeling that we’d failed at something that should have been simple. When we got home, we slipped back into our usual rhythm, almost as if nothing had happened, which somehow makes it even more confusing.
I guess I’m wondering why this happens. Is it normal for couples to argue more on holiday? And is it a sign that something is wrong, or just part of the pressure of being out of our routine?”
Dr Charlotte’s response: What is really striking about your situation is the contrast between how you and your partner interact and communicate when you’re at home compared to when you’re on holiday. Although this may seem unusual and difficult to understand, it’s actually a positive sign. Communication is the single biggest factor in the quality of relationships and how long they last. The two of you communicate well at home, and this tells me that you both have the skills and willingness to make the relationship work.
As these difficulties only happen on holiday, this tells me that something is being activated by the process of travelling. As you say yourself, an invisible switch flips, and so we need to figure out what this switch is, and how to manage it. You’ve alluded a couple of times in your letter to wanting to make the most of the time; I think this is key. It sounds like at home, you have a stable routine and you’re on the same page with how to spend your time and energy. You laugh together when the routine, roles and expectations are clear.
On the other hand, when you’re on holiday there is no set routine, and you feel a pressure to make the most of it. But, you’re not both on the same page about what this looks like in practice. The arguments you’ve had suggest that one of you leans towards taking it easy, while the other views a packed itinerary as a marker of a good trip. These are unspoken assumptions that the two of you could discuss and work through.
We already know that the two of you communicate well at home, and so it sounds like a discussion would be helpful prior to your trip, or even at the point of deciding where to go and booking. These discussions could centre around the questions “What are my hopes for this trip?” and “What would this look like in practice?”. A nice way to do this would be for each of you to write down these things separately, and then to have a discussion about how you are going to make this happen together. This is a way to bring you both on the same page like you are at home. To make this fun, you could spend an afternoon or evening doing this whilst enjoying some food and drinks from the place you’re visiting. This can help to lessen some of the bruising and bewilderment that you both are feeling after clashing in this way on your previous trips. See this as a new start, and a proactive way to prevent these tensions in the future.
Another piece of the puzzle is how you describe feeling tension when you ‘are meant to’ be feeling relaxed. I wonder if unstructured time brings up a deeper anxiety for you. There may be deeper reasons behind this, which if these difficulties are persistent, you may want to explore in therapy. In any case, you will likely benefit from building some skills to enable you to relax, namely breathing, relaxation or mindfulness techniques. These techniques are top of every therapist’s recommendation list because they have good evidence that they work, and so building these skills could help you to relax when you want and need to. I think often we assume that being in a beautiful place will automatically help us to feel relaxed. It can help certainly, but if we don’t have the skills to regulate our nervous system, it’s going to take a little while and maybe we will struggle to get there. Building these skills in advance helps us to get there more effectively.
You already know how to communicate well together, this is simply about bringing that same steadiness into a new landscape.
For more on this topic, check out Travelling as a couple: advice from a psychologist and How to be more spontaneous when you travel.
